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LO16-1. Define the monitoring problem and state its implications for economics.
LO16-2. Discuss why competition should be seen as a process, not a state.
LO16-3. Summarize how firms protect monopoly.
LO16-4. Explain why oligopoly is the best market structure for technological change.
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
LO16-1. Define the monitoring problem and state its implications for economics.
LO16-2. Discuss why competition should be seen as a process, not a state.
LO16-3. Summarize how firms protect monopoly.
LO16-4. Explain why oligopoly is the best market structure for technological change.
“It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is rat eat rat; dog eat dog. I’ll kill ’em, and I’m going to kill ’em before they kill me. You’re talking about the American way of survival of the fittest.”
Ray Kroc (founder of McDonald’s)
When Microsoft was designing Zune, the Microsoft workers were sent a link to a video of Steven Jobs (the CEO of Apple) showing Jobs stating, “The only problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste—Absolutely no taste.” The goal of Microsoft showing the video to Microsoft workers was to infuriate the Microsoft workers sufficiently so that they would show that not only do they have taste, but that they can bury Apple and its iPod. It was to make the competition with Apple personal. It didn’t work, and Apple went public with its “no taste” view of Microsoft in a series of TV ads that portrayed the Apple computer as the tasteful computer compared to a rather stodgy PC.
In earlier chapters we’ve seen some nice, neat models, but as we discussed in a previous chapter, often these models don’t fit reality directly. Real-world markets aren’t perfectly monopolistic; they aren’t perfectly competitive either. They’re somewhere between the two. The monopolistic competition and oligopoly models in previous chapters come

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